Last week we saw the peculiar experience of John Rigby & Co. during the British lockdown, now we have a look at another great firm from London: James Purdey & Sons. Here we’re invited to stay safe at home (yeah, we may have heard it already…) and we are offered the chance to pass the time learning a few details of the high end gunmaking trade. The upcoming live video, on the company’s Instagram page, will feature an overview of the barrel making process.

Here the invitation to the event from Purdey’s “Transformation Manager” Tom Nicholls:

We don’t know if the barrel making will cover shotguns or rifles, as the firm offers great examples of both, nevertheless the topic is definitely interesting. While it won’t reveal any trade secrets, hopefully it will show directly most of the steps of the process and maybe something about traditional approaches now rare, such as the crafting of damascus barrels.

Stay At Home With Purdey – Educational Video Series – A “Damascus Gun”.

This series was launched last month with the first episode being a hour long “Gun Maintenance Tutorial”. The video can still be found at the link below:

Just to let the readers not familiar with the brand understand what we are talking about, here below, we have a small selection of photos from their website. The product portfolio is quite extensive with several different platforms of shotguns, double rifles (side by side) and bolt action rifles.

The Sporter O/U shotgun.

Double Rifle, side by side express rifle.

Over-and-Under shotgun.

Hammer Ejector shotgun.

Trigger Plate O/U shotgun.

The New Bolt-Action Rifle is particularly interesting as it implements modern features in a very classy package. The “Purdey Chassis System” is a titanium frame completely hidden within the wooden stock,  allowing a rigid mating between stock and action and leaving the barrel free floating. The result, according to the manufacturer, is a rifle offering the quality and beauty of the past with accuracy of a modern platform. Yours starting from £29,500 + VAT.

New Bolt-Action rifle.

All images from www.purdey.com.